Developers Are Building The 'Stupidest Apps They Can Think Of' — And Everyone's Rushing To Download Them

Some developers say they're setting out to make the most
ridiculous apps they can think of. But instead of the
products getting ignored, ridiculed, or quickly crushed, they're
going viral and earning lots of downloads.

Yo, for example,
went viral for being a dead-simple notification tool that
merely lets users send the word "Yo" back and forth to each
other. Within its first few months, 100 million Yos were sent on
the platform. Yo only took eight hours to build; its founder,
Moshe Hogeg, admits Yo started as a "stupid" idea. Still, it
raised $1.5 million at a $5–10 million valuation from investors.

Venture capital associate Abram Dawson noticed the dumb app trend
and set out to make the "stupidest app he could think of." The
result: TD4W, an app that starts playing the hook of hit song
"Turn Down For What" as soon as it's opened. It's gotten a few
thousand downloads and it only took 45 minutes to build.

Business Insider

Today, another simplistic app called Ethan launched. It's already
gotten more than 200 upvotes on Reddit-like discovery site,
Product Hunt. The idea: Easily text message the guy who made it,
Ethan. This is the creator's actual description of the app:

You could ask what's wrong with these developers for
wanting to create such asinine products. Or you could ask: why
does the world find gimmicky startups so amusing and reward them
with tons of downloads?

There was the Pet Rock in the 1970s, created by Gary Dahl,
who
generated about $15 million in the product's first six
months. Dahl, a former advertising executive, sold his
rocks for $3.95 on a bed of hay. Each sale earned him a profit of
roughly $3.

Remember the iFart app?

Ken Hakuta's 1980s toy, the Wacky Wallwalker, sold more than 240
million products, netting him about $80 million.

And in the app world, dumb ideas have found success too.
The iFart came out a few years ago, a mobile whoopee cushion, and
its creator Joel Comm earned
half-a-million dollars in sales. Before that, there was
the million-dollar homepage, where a teenager was able to sell
one million pixels to one million advertisers for $1 each.

Ryan Hoover is co-founder of
app discovery site, Product
Hunt. His site is responsible for unearthing the Yo, TD4W and
Ethan apps. He believes people appreciate silly-sounding
light-weight distractions.

"People hate on silly, 'stupid' apps, but in my opinion
experimentation is a good thing, especially as the cost, money
and time to build [technology] decreases," Hoover tells Business
Insider. "[These apps are] lightweight distractions that aren't
intended to provide long-lasting utility."

But the real reason silly apps and products have always gone
viral may be pretty simple: People get bored quickly and like to
be entertained. Many apps are nothing more than toys, just in a
more technical form.

"People need to stop thinking of apps so narrowly," Tyler Hayes,
founder and CEO of private communication app Prime, tells
Business Insider. "They're products. Not just digital. How would
we feel if toys didn't exist?"